A tool for FoI junkies

The Silent State will be a must-read for Freedom of Information enthusiasts in the UK - the new book by Heather Brooke, the campaigner who forced MPs' expenses data into public view and just about brought down the UK political system in the process.

I wonder if she mentions Climategate at all? I dropped her an email when the story broke, but my guess is it may have come too late.

No wallflower

A hydrologist calling himself Potentilla has written a joint article with TonyN at the Harmless Sky blog. It shows an example of how activist scientists, environmental groups and green journalists combine to mislead the public. This is a must-read, particularly for anyone who knows the name of Lonnie Thompson.

Criminal charges could go ahead?

Christopher Booker has a second article in the Sunday Telegraph today in which he examines the ICO's claim that his hands are tied in the matter of criminal prosecutions at UEA because of the six months' time bar prescribed by the Magistrates Act. This story has generated considerable outrage in recent days, and some have suggested that more serious charges could be brought under different statutes altogether.

Booker makes two very interesting observations. First up he reckons that the six month for charges heard in magistrates' courts runs from when the offence was discovered rather than when it was committed. This is an opinion that has been aired elsewhere, and opinion seems to be divided on whether it is correct or not.

Intriguingly though, Booker also notes that charges of conspiring to defy the law could be brought under the Criminal Law Act 1977, where no time bar applies. Perhaps we haven't heard the last of this after all.

Cited by Booker

Christopher Booker cites The Hockey Stick Illusion in his column this weekend, the first time it's made an appearance in a broadsheet.

The centrepiece of the IPCC's 2001 report was Michael Mann's notorious "hockey stick", the graph purporting to show temperatures in the late 20th century soaring at an unprecedented rate – later exposed as a statistical artefact. Another new book, The Hockey Stick Illusion by A W Montford, brilliantly tells the bizarre tale of how Mann's colleagues, calling themselves "the Hockey Team" and now at the heart of the IPCC, managed to resurrect the discredited graph for inclusion in its 2007 report. Montford's book, if inevitably technical, expertly recounts a remarkable scientific detective story. And of course, it was incriminating leaked emails between members of the Hockey Team that were at the centre of the recent "Climategate" scandal at the University of East Anglia.

Most disturbing of all are the glimpses the story gives of the inner workings of the IPCC, an institution now so discredited and scientifically corrupted that only those determined to shut their eyes could possibly defend it. This is now compounded by the recent revelations by Dr North and myself in these pages of how its chairman, Dr Pachauri, has built a worldwide network of business links which provide his Delhi institute with a sizeable income.

Reprinting

Just had word from the publisher that The Hockey Stick Illusion is reprinting. Pretty chuffed.

David Holland on BBC news

UK readers can see David Holland interviewed on the BBC news here. The interview was moderately inconsequential IMHO, although David handled himself very well.

Also in the letters pages of the Times are old friends Bob Ward, the warmist PR man at Lord Stern's Grantham Institute, and Don Keiller, a sceptic academic.

Update on Jan 28, 2010 by Bishop Hill

The Channel Four report on the issue can be seen here on their internet TV viewer (which ought to be called the FourPlayer, but is regrettably known as Channel4OD). Their report is clearly from a green perspective, but does at least cheer us all up with a snippet from the Hide the Decline video.

Choice quote from Bob Ward "if you are less than transparent then people think you might be hiding something". To which one is tempted to respond that if you say you are hiding something, people might also conclude that you are hiding something. Like a decline for example.

East Anglia responds to ICO findings

The Vice-Chancellor of the University of East Anglia, Sir Edward Acton, has issued a statement in response to the annoucement by the ICO that the university was in breach of FoI legislation.

The ICO's opinion that we had breached the terms of Section 77 is a source of grave concern to the university as we would always seek to comply with the terms of the Act. During this case we have sought the advice of the ICO and responded fully to any requests for information.

Given that Sir Edward seems to be implicated in the breach of FoI legislation himself (at least according to one of the emails) "grave concern" is possibly an understatement.

(H/T Martin Rosenbaum via Steve2 in the comments)

Update on Jan 28, 2010 by Bishop Hill

More here:

• Sir Edward Acton says that the Information Commissioner didn't tell the university of the findings before they went to the press.
• Sir Muir Russell has said that he will announce his panel and work programme shortly.

Update on Jan 27, 2011 by Bishop Hill

This post was wrong on one fact. The Vice Chancellor referred to in the emails as being in on the breaches of FOI was not Acton, but his predecessor.

Lawson lays down the law

Nigel Lawson has written to Sir Muir Russell, setting out his views on the Climategate review that Russell is to head (H/T Anthony Watts). There is much to admire here, and one can hear Lawson's years of experience in the points he makes. Most importantly though is how he closes the letter:

Finally, there is the question of openness and transparency. It has increasingly come to be recognised that, if the findings of an inquiry are to command public confidence, it is necessary for the inquiry to be held for the most part in public (national security being the most obvious cause for exception), with transcripts of each day’s evidence made promptly available. The current Chilcot Iraq inquiry is only the latest in a series of inquiries where this has been the case. It is also the only way of demonstrating fairness towards those under investigation.

This will put huge pressure on Sir Muir, who has spoken in the past of the importance he attaches to carrying the confidence of the sceptic community. Readers may remember the poll conducted here, which suggested strongly that sceptics were divided as to his reliability between those who thought he couldn't be trusted and those who didn't know. With probably the most prominent sceptic in the UK now asking that he hold the hearings in public, it will surely be hard for him to resist.

Talking to Brian Micklethwait

If you click here, you can catch a longish interview I did with Brian Micklethwait. For those who don't know of Brian, he is best known as a libertarian thinker, working for the Libertarian Alliance and writing regularly at Samizdata, the biggest UK libertarian blog, as well as his own site. 

We cover a lot of ground, and there is some background on me, for those of you who are interested in such things. (Heaven forbid I should ever gain a public persona). I haven't dared listen to it yet, but I'll give it a bash tonight.

We recorded this in the runup to Christmas, when I was still rather concerned about the book being published while the Climategate story was hot. I guess I needn't have worried.

Rosenbaum on no prosecutions

The BBC's FoI correspondent, Martin Rosenbaum, has written an interesting piece on the "no prosecutions" story. Read it here.

Some MSM attention

Yesterday's Daily Express (a mid-market tabloid for those of you who don't know it) had a two page feature on the climate scandals, and gave The Hockey Stick Illusion a passing name check.

WHAT'S THE FUSS ABOUT THE HOCKEY STICK GRAPH?
Much of the current panic began in 1998 when Dr Michael Mann and
his co-authors published their now-discredited 'hockey stick' temperature plot. named for its shape that showed a long trend of steady temperature drop over a 1,000 year period and a sudden rise since the early nineties, it became the foundation stone for the global warming brigade.

New book, The Hockey Stick Illusion, by scientist Andrew Montford, tells how the figures don't stack up and how lone researcher Steve McIntyre exposed the myth. In fact the hockey stick, based on a computer generated model ignores natural climate fluctuations in the past. Christopher Booker, an author who believes the theory of man-made global warming has been disproved describes the original work as "one of the most comprehensively discredited artefacts in the history,of science' and adds: "Temperatures have always gone up and down over the years. The trend since 2001 is down. Noone knows what is going to happen but almost all the computer models on which man-made climate
change claims are based have been shown to be wrong.

There are a few nuances that I'd take issue with, and I'd not normally be described as a scientist, working in scientific publishing rather than research, but all in all I can't complain (apart from the fact that they recommend Booker's book at the end rather than mine!)

German home educators granted asylum in US

Guardian:

A US judge has granted ­political asylum to a German family who said they had fled the country to avoid persecution for home schooling their children.

Sometimes politicians forget who are the servants and who are the masters.

No prosecutions story hits MSM

The news that there will be no prosecutions over CRU's breaches of the Freedom of Information Act has hit the MSM, with both the Times and the BBC covering the story with some prominence.

It's interesting to note that the BBC is now referring to them as "leaked" files, as is the Met Office's Vicky Pope, who has a commentary piece in the Times, which comes across as a remarkably disingenuous piece of spin, repeating the line that the temperature data sets are independent despite the fact that it is known that this is not true.

Update on Jan 28, 2010 by Bishop Hill

Guardian's take on the story here. They're still calling it a hack.

Why do they want to know?

Via a correspondent, I have obtained a copy of the form that the police are sending round to sceptics as part of their investigation of the climategate leaks. Some of the questions being asked are pretty surprising:

18) What is your stance on climate change?

19)  Are you a current or past member of any political or environmental organisation/ group? Details:

20) Do you contribute to, participate in, or administer any internet based website, forum, blog, etc.  including any related to climate change? Details:

Is it just me, or is this rather sinister from a civil liberties point of view? I simply can't see that contributing to a blog is relevant to the inquiry. One can't help but get the impression of innocent people having police files being built on them, simply because the forces of law and order (in the shape of NDET) haven't got anything better to do.

Meanwhile, it is interesting to note that the offence being investigated is described in the form as, variously, a theft, a leak and a breach. But never a hack.

One thing we can say about the hacker/leaker is that he/she was possessed of some relatively sophisticated IT skills, so it's also interesting to see that the police seem to have no interest in whether any of the people they are quizzing have this skillset.

Very odd.

Will he stay or will he go?

Someone has started a prediction market on poor old RK Pachauri. The contract pays $1 if he resigns or is removed as head of the IPCC before 1 May this year.

It's currently trading at 43 cents, which seems about right to me.